You have alerts set up and scour review sites for those dreaded one- and two-star ratings. You jump on the ones that start with, “If I could have given ZERO stars, I would have.” And rightfully so. How you respond to negative reviews affects not only your relationship with the reviewer but your reputation with anyone who reads it forever after. But it’s just as important to respond to neutral reviews for a few reasons:
We can’t do live video because of HIPAA.
Legal would never let us.
Our approval process is too cumbersome.
Patients would never agree to it.
Hospital marketers can rattle off a number of reasons they aren’t using live video in their marketing, but we’re going to give you one reason you should: Engagement.
Specifically, viewers spend three times longer watching live videos on Facebook than videos that are no longer live. That likely accounts for at least part of the reason the number of Facebook Live broadcasts has quadrupled in recent years. Live videos now account for one in five videos on Facebook.
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If we suggested you use a portion of your healthcare marketing budget to take an ad out in the Yellow Pages, you’d think we were crazy—and we would be. After all, the Yellow Pages are no more! But business directories still exist—this time digitally—and they’re just as important to your hospital marketing efforts today as those massive yellow tomes.
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Featuring your state-of-the-art technology in your healthcare marketing helps educate your potential patients, but people relate to people. Featuring your staff in your hospital social media efforts is a sure bet to making your hospital a social media star.
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The best-performing hospitals from a marketing standpoint are hospitals that are active parts of their communities. That doesn’t just mean donating to the local park and recreation league or hosting a fundraiser. It also means getting out into the community through event marketing.
Reputation is everything in business. It’s even more important for hospital marketing because a hospital’s reputation is its most important asset.
Without a strong reputation, your hospital’s patient intake will suffer. After all, people don’t want to entrust their health to a hospital that has a poor reputation. (more…)
If you don’t think that healthcare social media marketing is important, think again – because patients do. According to one survey, half of all Internet-using patients surveyed said they use social media to check out a doctor, which plays into their decision on the provider they choose.
Potential patients use social media a lot. And a lot of the healthcare information they receive on an ongoing basis comes from social media. Facebook and the like aren’t just to connect to friends and family; they are there to provide information. (more…)
Running a community hospital in an area dominated by larger hospitals with more brand recognition and bigger budgets can be very difficult. It’s hard to stand out unless you have a convincing brand value proposition, a competitive advantage to exploit, and a smart hospital marketing strategy to gain market awareness.
This challenge is particularly seen in suburban or rural areas where community hospitals are going up against urban medical centers in larger nearby cities. Standing out can be hard, but it is possible to carve out a competitive advantage and stand out in a crowded market dominated by larger competitors.
The means to this outcome is a well-crafted hospital marketing strategy built around the natural benefits of being a community hospital.
The main advantage a smaller hospital has versus a larger hospital is simple: smaller hospitals mean doctors have fewer patients on average, thus improving patient relations and creating a more personable feel.
We see this all the time in the retail and service industries. You may not get the same selection in a smaller store as a larger one, but you’ll probably get better customer service than going with a larger chain. For example, if you’re using a plumber who knows you by name, you’ll probably get more prompt attention than going with a larger, more corporate plumbing company.
The same logic applies to hospitals. No patient wants to feel like they’re just one face out of thousands who make their way through the larger hospital, almost like an assembly line. Patients in, patients out. That’s the image of a large metro hospital that you want to portray. Your contrasting image is one where doctors and nurses have the time to get to know the members of their community and give them more direct attention.
Another major advantage is proximity. No one wants to travel 45-60 minutes each way to visit someone in the hospital, or go to see a doctor for a checkup. Community hospitals have a big advantage in that they are in their patient’s own backyard. You’re only a short drive away, and in emergency situations, that can be invaluable.
Finally, a big advantage is wait time. Wait times at large urban hospitals are almost always longer than they are in smaller, rural ones because of the sheer volume of patients they have to process. The message here is this: “Go to a place where you won’t spend more time waiting than you will actually being seen by a doctor.”
Hospital marketing is all about creating perceptions. You want to paint a perception through your ad campaign that large hospitals are just too big. They’re impersonal, overcrowded, and inefficient. They can’t possibly care more about you as an individual as a community hospital does, because we’re your neighbors. Those are the perceptions you’re working to create.
Painting this picture with a traditional ad campaign is one way to differentiate yourself. Having an active social media presence is another. You can probably be more responsive to patients and their families online than a bigger hospital can, even if they have more resources. Capitalize on that.
Make sure you are creating a cohesive message across all of your marketing channels, traditional and digital. A campaign-style format is best because you are working with a central theme and everything synergizes well with everything else.
A smaller, rural community hospital can compete with larger, big city hospitals. It’s all about playing to your strengths and creating brand perceptions that favor you.
TotalCom is a full-service hospital marketing and advertising agency that believes in getting great results from telling great stories. Contact us for more information or view our previous work and see what stories we can tell for you.
Hospital marketing programs across the country often do things differently. After all, what works for one system will not necessarily work for another. With that being said, there are systems that have the most robust and effective hospital marketing programs in the nation, and they all seem to incorporate the same fundamentals and tricks of the trade. (more…)
Every hospital and health system wants to grow its patient base. That is the job of hospital marketing: to increase brand awareness and build positive relationships between the hospital and potential patients.
There are a lot of methods that hospitals currently use to market themselves. From buying billboards to airing TV commercials, creating a Facebook page, and even sending out direct mail, marketing strategies can work together to create a total-package approach that targets a patient from multiple angles. (more…)